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Electrons flowing swiftly across the surface of topological insulators (TIs) are "spin polarized," their spin and momentum locked. The potential to control electron distribution in spintronic devices makes TIs a hot topic in materials science. Now scientists at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have discovered another useful surprise.

Seventy years ago theorists predicted superlarge nuclei would exhibit a quantum-mechanical phenomenon known as "atomic collapse." Recently materials scientists calculated that highly-charged impurities in graphene should exhibit a corresponding buildup of electrons partially localized in space and energy -- a unique electronic resonance. By constructing artificial superlarge nuclei on graphene, researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have achieved the first experimental observation of long-sought atomic collapse, with important implications for the future of graphene-based electronic devices.

Berkeley Lab researchers have achieved a major advance in understanding how genetic information is transcribed from DNA to RNA by providing the first step-by-step look at the biomolecular machinery that reads the human genome.

The ratio of isotopes in elements like oxygen, sulfur, and nitrogen were once thought to be much the same everywhere, determined only by their different masses. Then isotope ratios in meteorites, interplanetary dust and gas, and the sun itself were found to differ from those on Earth. Planetary researchers now use Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory's Advanced Light Source to study these "mass-independent" effects and their origins in the chemical processes of the early solar system.

Artificial photosynthesis and other new technologies based on Metalloenzyme catalysis will benefit from a technique for simultaenously collecting both diffraction and spectroscopy data demonstrated by Berkeley Lab and SLAC researchers at the world's most powerful X-ray laser.

The protein structure of the archaellum, the motor that propels many species of Archaea, the third domain of life, has been characterized for the first time by a team from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the Max Planck Institute for Terrestrial Microbiology. A ring made of six identical proteins derives energy from hydrolyzing adenosine triphosate and uses this energy to drive shape changes, both assembling and rotating the archaellum's whiplike propeller.